A research suggests that the U.S. has enough water resources to grow algae as an alternative fuel source.
Scientists are eyeing the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern Seaboard as especially favorable locations for algae growth. While algae grow best in hot, humid, and wet temperatures, researchers say that these two locations could likely support the broad-scale growth of enough algae to produce as much as 25 billion gallons of algae-based fuel a year, which is one-twelfth of the yearly needs of the United States.
Algae are widely known as a potential source of oil. In recent years, several research teams and companies have been finding waysto improve the production of biofuels based on algae, since algal biofuels, as hydrologist and team leader Mark Wigmosta would put it, can be part of the solution to the country's energy needs. This led to the quest of Wigmosta's team for possible locations where significant amounts of algae could grow.
Since growing algae would require a significant amount of water, the team noted that the water could possibly come from fresh groundwater, salty groundwater, and seawater. Wigmosta and his colleagues weighed the positives and negatives of the various water sources. They noted that, although freshwater is cheap, it comes in very limited supply in many areas.
On the other hand, saline groundwater is attractive because of its wide availability; however, it is usually at a much deeper depth, thereby requiring more equipment and technology to pump it to the surface and make it suitable for algae production. More so, they said that seawater is plentiful but would require much more infrastructure to move the water from the coast to processing plants.
Although these water sources each have their downside, Wigmosta's research has still proven that the United States is equipped with land and water resources that could possibly support the growth of algae for biofuel production. With the constant pursuit of the country's researchers to grow algae, along with the unraveling support from the government, who knows, oil based on algae could replace a significant portion of the nation's oil imports in time.
The full report is published on the May 7 issue of journal Environmental Science and Technology.
